You can see I also used wood filler to fill the joints and to smooth where the angled sides hit the face frame. If I was doing another one, i'd skip this and just do it later when I start hitting the Bondo. I heard enough people try the glue method and then switch to Bondo for the surround, so I just sent that way from the start. Glad that I did.

Basically just painted it on like a cake, and then used a super-coarse pad on an orbital sander to take down the tops of the ridges. You can see the flat parts where that started to happen here:

Started to hit it with some primer, just because I was starting to obsess over the perfection of the patches on the seams. I figure by making it a uniform color, I'd see if it camo'd sufficiently.

Here's another mod that I went with also. I was trying to keep the 2x4 wood bracing inside to a minimum for the purposes of weight. I noticed though that by standing it up and laying it down a few times, I started to see some cracks in Han's chest seam. Need to beef it up along the long-side. So I got some aluminum stock (had it left over from my E-11 build), and used that Liquid Nails to put long pieces down the long side.

Worked perfect, basically no flex now in that direction, and WAY lighter than using some heavy structural wood. 10/10, would buy again!

And now to patch those cracks. Again, starting to get OCD about it, and I think its kind of like soldering: the more you mess with it, the worse it gets.

My garage is a 3-single door layout, so I used one of the bays to build a makeshift paint booth. Really just shooting it outside wasn't working because of the wind. Used the garage door rails to hang the plastic, and used duct tape to seal it up.

So here's where things started to get really annoying. The first paint that I used was a Rustoleum metallic, and it really turned out bad. The paint seems to separate quickly in the can, and the "metallic" parts are some type of gritty substrate in the mixture. When spraying it over large areas, I didn't get a uniform dispersement of that metallic particles, so I got some areas that would get bursts of it, looking like sections that were rough or poorly sanded (which was stupid, because the MDF is ultra-smooth to start). Overall, looked like I had built the frame out of rough fence pickets. I didn't even post any pics, because it annoyed me so bad. That, coupled with the 100+ degree temps we had, I put the project on hold for a couple weeks.

So when I came back to it, I brought the whole thing back down with an orbital sander.

Now I had eaten into the MDF a bit in places, so it really was rough in spots. So I ended up doing a Bondo skim over the ENTIRE BOX. Yep, you heard that right.

But after spending all that time and hitting it with primer again, now it was awesomely smooth again:

After cleanup and painting, they look great. Yes, I know its not screen-accurate, but I went with Rustoleum "Flat Chestnut". Breaks up the silver/grey, adds some contrast, and the tad bit of bronze I think is perfect. This pic is pretty accurate to how it actually looks.

Got a roll of aluminum flashing and started going to town. First I cut a template off one of the panels, and then cut 8 aluminum backs. Then I noticed Turc must have been casting these from multiple molds, so there's a tad bit of variance on the back side where you don't see. No problem, but I wish I had realized before I spent all the time cutting those 8 sheets JUST right.

I tried Liquid Nails, but it was too hard to clamp and keep it from getting messy. Decided to order a roll of 3M VHB tape, and that's really the only solution I'd recommend.

Do you mean the long narrow holes in the volvo panels, like where the turn signals go? Like I mentioned, Turc's volvo panels actually have more than one mold. For one of them, I was able to drill some holes and then just get in there with needle-nose pliers and pop it like this:

The filler was thin enough that it broke in a clean line. For the other one, that filler was too thick, so I just went with a Dremel tool. Used the straight drill bit-like wood cutting bit, then cleaned it up with the sanding wheel bit.

Hey thanks, you guys! This is my first 'real' build thread on this forum (other than the simple E-11 I did a couple months ago). QCWolf, your build thread is really what sent me over the edge to actually put in the orders for these parts and dive in.

It would be cool, but at this point I don't think I'm going to tackle it. I had to deal with the MDF fuzziness when I had to CTRL-Z that bad paint job, and now I've got a nice, uniform, smooth bondo shell over the whole thing. I think I'd cry if I took powertools to it again.

I love a good HIC build and yours is looking great! I'm so glad that you're taking on this project. It's fun to see how everyone builds theirs. I'm actually gearing up to start a second one on commission.

Pretty happy now with the patch of the crack on his chest, just need to sand and shoot the one on his belt again. Then I can finally take the masking off the frame and bring it inside out of the 103+ heat.

It's really hard to make the edges meet up. I got pretty close but it takes a lot of filler material to close that gap. If I ever do another one, I have a few ideas about how to make the edges a bit more flush.

I know when I did mine, I tried to get the transition to be subtle but the frame from Zenix is fairly deep to accommodate the various castings of Han. I think it's a detail that most people don't worry about. It's like the rounding of the edges. Some people do it and some don't.

It's really hard to make the edges meet up. I got pretty close but it takes a lot of filler material to close that gap. If I ever do another one, I have a few ideas about how to make the edges a bit more flush.

I love HIC builds! this is the first time I've seen it done with not using glue. very cool!

any reason why u chose not to go with the glue method?

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I've seen several people start with the glue method, then end up changing to bondo for various reasons. Seems like they wished they had just gone straight bondo, and I thought I could get a cooler texture that way anyway. Worked out great I think.